Last revised: August 2008

Poetry: How to Find a Specific Poem

Scope: This guide provides a quick start for finding a specific poem. Email the subject area specialist at thackman@umd.edu or call 301-314-8521 for more information.

1. LION (Literature Online) This database includes a searchable library of literary works, including over 250,000 poems. Also includes Poets On Screen, a library of over 800 clips of poets reading their own and other poets' work.
2. Representative Poetry Online. Searchable database from the University of Toronto includes 3,162 English poems by 500 poets from Caedmon, in the Old English period, to the work of living poets today.
3. Bartleby Verse. This site includes, among other materials, a searchable collection of anthologies of American and English poetry. Includes "thousands of poems by hundreds of authors...one of the largest free collections of verse on the web."
4. Search the Libraries' Catalog. Choose the author beginning with... search option and type in the author's name (last name, first name) EXAMPLE: dickinson, emily.

Examine your search results for books that mention "complete works of...", "complete poetry of...", "collected poems of...", etc.
5. Check the following indexes for anthologies that may include your poem. Then check the Libraries' Catalog to see if the library owns any of these anthologies.

   Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies
   LOCATION: McKeldin Reference Stacks
   CALL NUMBER: PN1022.H39 2002
   

   Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Collected and Selected Works
   LOCATION: McKeldin Reference Stacks
   CALL NUMBER: PN1022.C63 2004
   

6. Search Ask.com, Google and MSN Live Search for a distinctive line or phrase from your poem by enclosing it in quotes. Many poetry sites also have Discussion Boards, where you can post your query and other users may respond. Or try one of these poetry Web sites:

   American Verse Project: A collaborative project between the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative (HTI) and the University of Michigan Press, this project is assembling an electronic archive of volumes of American poetry published prior to 1920.

   Electronic Text Center: Project from the University of Virginia Library includes the publicly accessible Modern English collection, which contains "fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, letters, newspapers, manuscripts and illustrations from 1500 to the present, arranged for browsing by author's last name or by category of interest." Due to copyright restrictions, some items may be unavailable to non-UVA users.

   Modern American Poetry: Companion site to the Oxford University Press Anthology of Modern American Poetry (2000). Includes poet-specific pages, some of which include links to full-text online poetry.

   Poets.org: Website of the Academy of American Poets, where visitors can find hundreds of essays and interviews about poetry, biographies of more than 500 poets, almost 2000 poems, and audio clips of 150 poems read by their authors or other poets.

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